3 Tips for Avoiding Illness and Injury While Traveling

Taking a vacation should be all about experiencing new cultures and environments, enjoying foreign foods and atmospheres, and relishing in the days away from your routine and boring life. However, if you get sick or injured while on vacation, you may find yourself pining for your routine and boring life to get your body back to normal.

While traveling is exciting business for most people, there are some precautions you should take to ensure you can enjoy your vacation to the utmost potential. To help keep you safe and feeling well while traveling, here are three tips for avoiding illness and injury while abroad.

Practice Safety While Traveling Around Your Destination City

Most travelers are concerned about getting to their final destination city safely. But once you’re there, your safety is still vitally important, especially when traveling around the area. According to Consumer Reports, tourists are 10 times more likely to die from injuries incurred while traveling than from infectious diseases. For this reason, it’s vital that you always wear a seatbelt when riding in a car on vacation, know the road signs and laws in the area you’re visiting, and ask for assistance whenever necessary.

If you’re using public transportation, hire drivers who you feel confident know their way around your destination city to avoid being brought to an area you didn’t intend. Also, try to avoid drinking while traveling or riding on transportation that is overloaded with people. By keeping these safety practices in mind, you should be able to avoid many injuries while traveling.

Get the Sleep Your Body Needs

Traveling can wreak havoc on your internal clock, especially if you’re hours ahead or behind your normal time zone. Being sleepy can not only make your vacation less enjoyable, but it can also put you more at risk for becoming sick or injured while traveling. To make sure this doesn’t happen, be vigilant about getting the sleep your body needs while traveling, even if it means missing out on a thing or two you were planning to participate in.

To help with your sleeping pattern while traveling, Michael Barber of Urgent Care Locations recommends adjusting your sleep schedule a few days before you leave on vacation. This will give your body time to get used to sleeping at hours that may seem unnatural and help you get the most out of your travel and vacation time.

Bring Meds For Basic Health Needs

When traveling, your body tries to do all it can to adjust to the change in climate, food, water, air and more. However, sometimes this can be just too much for your body to handle at one time and may result in you getting a little sick—like experiencing headaches, nausea, diarrhea and more, according to KidsHealth.org—and requiring some basic medication for comfortability.

Different areas and countries may have different over-the-counter medications that affect your body in different ways than the meds you normally take a home. For this reason, it’s a good idea to take the medications you normally take for things like heartburn, upset stomach, or headaches when you travel. Pack a few pills for each type of illness just in case you experience it while abroad.

To truly have a great traveling experience and vacation time, make sure you understand the best ways to avoid becoming sick or injured while on the road. Use the three tips above to stay safe and healthy next time you travel.